Last fling in Bali

So after our last night in Gili Air, which we enjoyed under a full moon

And a fascinating breakfast alongside the cutest tiny little ants ever which were kind enough to clean up the drips of honey Littletree spilled from her pancake

And Littletree had said her billionth goodbye to the Indonesian kids in the family who ran our villas

We got on the boat to Bali…

It was not the best boat ride ever; of course, they were overbooked and we couldn’t get seats – I managed to make enough hullabaloo for the guy to let us sit up on the roof so we could at least sit down, and lo! There were seats up on the roof anyway; no idea why they just wanted to keep the rooftop vacant.

We landed on Bali to find it pouring with rain and many of the streets flooding

(So glad we were in a minibus and not on a moped!)

And happy to arrive to our hotel to relax after the journey. The next morning, it cleared up a bit and we spent the day wandering around, ingressing and sightseeing a little, marvelling at what counts as a petrol station on Bali

– I even found a bar that was made just for me

And having hacked all the portals we could, and gotten more massages than should be humanly possible, we set out for the evening to find the awesome night market we ate at last year, only last year, we’d gone there with some people who knew the way, and I only vaguely knew the rough area we needed to go to. I tried googling, but ended up somewhere very, very not where we thought we were going.

A surprise adventure!

By sheer chance we found ourselves wandering after dark around a random neighbourhood; thanks to googlemaps on my phone I vaguely knew where we were, but no idea how to get to where we wanted to go. At the point that Littletree was fed up with walking and just wanted to eat, we walked into the first place we came to, but Littletree got a bad vibe from it and wouldn’t even walk though the door.

Next door to that place we tried again, and it turned out to be a duck restaurant and we got the most delectable dinner ever! Duck fried rice, duck fried noodles and a spicy green curry duck. Oh, it was divine!

And finally, after even more massages; time to get on the plane back to Australia…

Early Bilbies

Littletree has gone away for the holidays to stay with her grandparents in Israel, so she’s over there now celebrating Passover.

We haven’t ever really celebrated Easter before, and she’s well-informed about the Pagan origins of the holiday, and knows that technically, it’s a Spring rite, and therefore should be observed around the full moon after the Vernal Equinox, which isn’t for another six months for us up here in the Southern Hemisphere. We’ve talked at length about Ishtar and Oestre and the significance of rabbits and eggs.

This year, Littletree declared that she doesn’t mind about all of that stuff, she just wants to have the “wake up in the morning and have a surprise easter egg hunt with hidden chocolates”. She explained to me that she knows that the “Easter Bunny” would just be me pretending, but she asked me to do it for her anyway. And to do it early, since she would be away on the “proper” Easter – as she wisely pointed out; it’s irrelevant when we do it, since it’s not really Easter anyway, and the whole holiday is just a made-up thing.

Fair enough.

So off I went to a purveyor of processed egg-shaped chocolate confections to purchase a small hoarde of goodies for Littletree to find. A dozen “egg-sized” chocolate eggs, a small bag of “mini” eggs, and an Easter Bilby.

The Easter Bilby is an important and noteworthy part – here in Australia, rabbits are a massive plague of a pest, and meanwhile, the Bilby is a cute little Australian native animal that sort of vaguely looks like a bunny, and they’re highly endangered since the introduction of European settlers to the country (said settlers were also the foolish imports who brought the rabbits with them). Anyway, Australia tries to cull feral rabbits, and promote saving bilbies, and somehow, eating chocolate bilbies at Easter instead of bunnies is a part of that. Or something. At least it’s educational.

Anyway, Littletree awoke on the morning before she left to find a little trail of chocolate eggs outside her door

She started collecting them up in her shirt

Until she found that the trail led out into the garden to a basket

There were eggs hidden all around the house

and around the garden

Littletree got quite the stash!

She did plan to save the Bilby, but after about an hour she came to me, all distressed, and said, “mama, the worst thing ever happened – I was playing with my Easter Bilby and the wrapping just fell off of it, and then it broke, so I had to eat the broken bits, and then it was uneven, so I had to eat more to make it neat… and now it’s all wrecked.”

The poor child – she had to eat the whole thing!

She did save all the eggs to take to her cousins in Israel though – apparently they don’t get chocolate there, only matzah.

Authentic Aussie Experience

Last week Littletree and I had some visitors from the USA come to stay – the most awesome Andy and the most gorgeous Tif made it all the way to our rainforest hideaway!

So awesome to get to meet good friends from Google in real life!

Of course, it was still flooding, though the rain had mostly stopped and the waters gone down a fair ways, getting in to our place was quite the adventure for city folk (at least Tif is a tough Jamaican)

And crossing the creek with luggage

Actually, they arrived after dark, so that made it even more fun, these are the photos of when they left.

Of course, I had to make them a traditional roast dinner – Kangaroo Roast

And cake, which goes without saying - Tif’s favourite; a tres leches cake.

We explored the rainforest around the back of my property

And climbed up to the spring

And climbed up the mango trees

Google+ Hangouts from the tops of a tree was pretty epic!

And Littletree and Tif bonded over their mutual love of Chupa Chups

We went out to Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary, and got to see all manner of awesome critters and even cuddle koalas, but I’ll save that for its own post tomorrow :)

Most of all, we had a fantastic time, and were sad to see them go, even over Thai food.

Miracles Every Day

As we lit the eighth candle last night, I talked with Littletree about the miracle of Channukah - about 2000 years ago, the temple was destroyed and the people needed specially prepared sacred oil to keep the sacred lamp burning. But in the ruins of the temple, all that remained was one little jar of oil; barely enough to last for one day, and it would take eight days to make more.
By a miracle, that small jar of oil lasted for eight days - long enough to make more, and to keep the flame burning.

For me, this is a true story; one that I've experienced in my real life. So many times I've been in the communal kitchens at Rainbow Gatherings, where communal vegetarian meals are prepared for sometimes up to 5,000 people twice daily.

The whole shebang is run by volunteers, without any structured leaders, workers or organisation. Everything from the collecting of donations, the writing of shopping lists, the shopping, the storage, the kitchen hygiene and the food preparation is done by self-appointed volunteers.

And sometimes we get into the kitchen to prepare food for hundreds or thousands of people, only to find that there's no oil left to cook with.
So I get an empty oil bottle, and I go around the whole festival to people's individual camp sites, and ask: can anyone donate a little oil from their personal food stash.

Even just a splash of oil, every little bit helps. Some people don't have oil, some people can just spare a little, some people give up half a bottle... but I always return to the kitchen with enough oil (or salt, or potatoes, or whatever) to make the meal for everyone to share.

It's a true miracle. When people work together and share as a community, everything is possible.

Chag Sameach.

Christmas Popcorn

Littletree is pretty excited to be celebrating Christmas this year – she decided to decorate a tree, so we found a fallen branch outside and set it up for her to decorate

We don’t have all that much in the way of decorations, and not much of a budget to buy any, so we took a tip from my lovely friend Gramma Miri (who makes the most amazing custom-made Spirit Hoods) and made Popcorn Garlands to decorate around.

The first step being, of course, making popcorn

But as these things do with Littletree, everything turns to science. She observed the popcorn popping, and wanted to know how it works. YouTube delivered some fine slow motion shots of popcorn popping, which, of course, led us down a slow-motion videos rabbit-hole

But we did eventually make it back to popcorn, and naturally there has to be quality control.

Rigorous scientific testing of every aspect of the popcorn…

Littletree finally stopped eating long enough to actually thread some onto string and make garlands

yay!

And it looks great on the tree

Costume Preparation

So, it’s All Hallows Eve and Littletree has been hard at work getting ready for the big home schoolers Hallowe’en party.

If you’ve been reading along, you’ll remember she’s been working on designing her Were-Cat costume for a while, starting from the first step of fashion design and scouring op-shops and dollar shops for materials and props. We even dyed her hair.

The amazing goddessmother Lady Demelza of course helped her a lot with working out the sewing of the costume and getting it all together, and the results are… well, I’m biased, but I’m intensely impressed.

They found fluffy black material, sewed it into a vest, just like in Littletree’s design, managed to get cat ears onto a headband. So, all prepared, Littletree did her own make-up

And her own hair

Which turned out amazing!

And the finished product

Which bears a striking resemblance to her original design

So then it was time to team up with her friend Indie, and away we go to the party!'

On the way, we talked a bit about the old Celtic traditions and Beltane… and Littletree interrupted me to give me a lecture on the spread of the Bubonic Plague and the importance of hand-washing. She somehow manages to bring everything back to microbiology.